Advanced Deck Building Strategies

Building a dominant deck in Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft demands a comprehensive knowledge of the game's card pool, a design focus that anticipates a clear path to victory against multiple opposing deck builds, and a synergistic appreciation for the way your minions and spells interact.

The best deck-builders approach the process systematically, mentally cataloging their decision making around a four-step process:

Identify the Type of Deck you want to make: Aggro, Mid-range, Control, etc.

Type of Decks

Hearthstone decks tend to be build around one of three mechanical principles: Aggro, (pure offense), Mid-Range, (quick and comprehensive decks), and Control (denial and situation domination). Each strategy has merits and weaknesses.

Aggro

Aggro decks are ones focused completely on the early game and on attacking your enemy's hero as much as possible and are otherwise known as Rush style decks. You care less about killing what's on their board and you really just want to put down as many cheap and fast minions to accomplish this.

Normally you want to have a class that can easily and cheaply bypass taunts and just overwhelm your opponent, forcing them to deal with your minions instead in order to try and stabilize.

Strengths:

Easy to play, very little decision making required

Typically inexpensive to build

Games are faster making climbing the ladder easier

Deck is focused on mostly 1-3 cost minions meaning you'll almost always have something to play

Weakness:

Decks with a lot of healing and taunts shut this style down

No late game, you will probably never make it to turn 10 and win

Winning or Losing is based more on luck than skill, so nothing much is really learned

Recommended Aggro Classes:

Hunter, Paladin, Rogue, Warlock, Warrior, Mage

Types of Cards to focus on:

Low Cost Minions

Minions with Charge

Direct Damage Spells that can hit the opponent's Hero

Cheap removal for enemy taunts (like stuff that can silence minions)

mid-range

Mid-range decks typically kick into gear around turn 3/4. The focus is on controlling the board in your first couple of turns before buffing those 1-3 cost minions to snowball into the mid and late game.

Using those buffed minions to keep the board clear of enemy minions and drawing cards to combo finish the enemy with when they have both the right cards and the enemy's HP falls below the combo's total damage output.

Strengths:

Balanced deck that can deal with a variety of other styles

Strong mid-game that typically ends with some sort of combo finish making it hard to counter if you don't know it's coming.

Typically includes huge burst combos that come out of nowhere.

Weaknesses:

A bit combo dependent, not being able to draw your Win Condition is how you'll typically lose if it's not against an Aggro deck

If you don't have the right cards, Aggro decks will just outright kill you before you can gain control

Recommended Mid-Range Classes:

Druid, Mage, Paladin, Rogue, Shaman

Control

Control decks are mainly late-game-centric, they want to delay and survive until the late game with removal spells and super cost efficient minions before dropping tons of large high cost minions on to the board to kill the enemy.

These type of decks typically don't really do anything until turn 6+ outside of defending themselves from damage at which point they simply devastate the enemy with turn after turn of monsters filling up the board until the opponent can't handle them anymore.

Strengths:

Designed to have tons of options as your hand should constantly be full of cards

Minions you put on the field are usually game changers and the opponent must deal with them

All your minions can be considered Win Conditions if the enemy can't deal with them

Weaknesses:

Some extremely Aggro decks can deal damage so fast that removing them after they do damage isn't enough

Recommended Control Classes:

Druid, Mage, Paladin, Priest, Warlock, Warrior

Win Condition

This is to say, how do you expect to win with this deck?

Knowing what kind of deck you want to build is important, since it's typically tied to your "Win Condition" as well. For example, Aggro decks tend to have 1 finishing blow combo that's cheap so they can finish off an opponent as they run out of steam.

I'll list some win conditions that are common to every class.

Druid

Druids have a popular finishing combo of Force of Nature + Savage Roar that allows them to do 14 damage by itself for 9 mana instantly if the enemy doesn't have any taunts. This combo is even deadlier if the Druid player has minions on the board before using this combo.

Hunter

After the change to Unleash the Hounds and their cost being lowered from 4 to 2, this combo became very popular and it all depends on the enemy's field. The more minions they have, the more damage this does and this is flexible based on your current hand. If the opponent has 5 creatures on the board, you can do a massive 15 damage for 4 mana (2x Timber Wolf + Unleash the Hounds) or if they have 3 creatures, the same for 6 (2x Timber Wolf + 2x Unleash the Hounds). You usually don't need to do that much damage though so normally just using the Timber Wolf + Unleash the Hounds combo along with a way to take out any taunts blocking you from attacking is enough.

Mage

Not as popular anymore after Pyroblast's change from being 8 mana to 10 mana, but still works. Using Alexstrasza to drop an enemy's health to 15 and then the turn after hitting them with Alexstraza and Pyroblast for a meaty 18 damage.

Paladin

Sad to say, Paladins don't currently have a staple surprise finisher, they are a very balanced and powerful class that are able to do a lot of everything so maybe this would be looked at as one of their weaknesses, but more so they just keep attacking you until you die instead of unleashing some crazy combo on you. A lot of their cards can kill you, but there isn't really a combo that will surprise people.

Priest.

Priests don't really have any particular minion they use to combo with, instead anything with a lot of health works and to make things a little more crazy, you can even double their HP once or twice before using Inner Fire to kill them. 1 Particularly scary thing is a Ysera drawing you Dream Cards with 24 attack and 24 Health, something you can think about doing if you drop her and someone decides they can just stop her by silencing her.

rogue

Brutal finisher, Leeroy is very popular as a finisher, especially so if you have ways to abuse his low cost which also makes his bad battlecry unimportant. With 2x Shadowstep and 2x Cold Blood this combo can deal out an insane 26 damage with 10 mana, but even without 5 cards to do the combo, there's still plenty of damage here.

shaman

Windfury Leeroy Jenkins with 2x Rockbiter might not hurt as much as the Rogue version, but this still packs a punch, coming in at a total of 18 damage for 8 mana, this is quite good compared to other class finishes.

warlock

Another Leeroy finisher, this time Warlock style which is basically the cheapest Leeroy finisher. 6 mana for 14 damage and hopefully good bye to both Leeroy and the enemy.

warrior

Finally Warrior and while technically doesn't need to be used as a finisher, the chances of him surviving an extra turn after being enraged drops dramatically as the enemy will always try to remove him or they will most likely be dead. He turns into a 12/8 monster that can easily be taken out by Polymorph, Hex or Big Game Hunter or silenced back into a 4/8. If you want a cheaper version of this, Leeroy Jenkins + Inner Rage is half the price, but will be 8/1 that gives the enemy two 1/1 Whelps.

Meta-game Counter Cards

What the Meta-game (or usually known as just Meta) is, is simply what's popular at the moment in terms of decks and strategies. The Meta is constantly changing so the usefulness of cards always change, but identifying what's popular is the first step to combating it.

A huge debate that will probably always be in contention for discussion or arguments are the seemingly massive overuse of Legendary cards in a deck, some having as many as 4 very large legendaries.

Tinkmaster Overspark is incredibly useful as he acts like a netural class version of a Polymorph/Hex. The chance to give your opponent a 5/5 Devilsaur instead isn't a downside if you're using this to only target giant Legendaries like Ragnaros, Ysera or Alexstrasza. Some might even argue changing Sylvanas Windrunner into a 5/5 Devilsaur is better than leaving her the way she is on the board to steal your stuff when she dies.

When Aggro become more prevalent, Sen'jin Shieldmasta is probably the best way to stop those decks that are designed to purely ignore everything and just attack straight to your hero's face. With Shieldmasta on the field, they will have to usually sacrifice 2 or even 3 of their cheap cards to take it out if they don't have another way to get through which usually spells doom for that strategy where 1 turn makes a huge difference.

This super plain card has all the right stats making it a perfect and cheap edition to a lot of mid-range aggro or control decks. The reason why is that when Warlocks, Druids, Rogue, Paladin or aggro in general are in flavor, the 5 health on this card allows it to sit right out of range of a lot of cards. Warlocks depend on Shadow Bolt and Soul Fire to take out scary cards, but they both do 4 damage. Druids don't really use Starfire since it only hits 1 target whereas Starfall can do both hit for 5 and hit everything for 2 for 1 mana less, so in most cases you are trading a more valuable card for a Yeti which is always good for you. The theme continues on with Rogues and Paladin which both do 4 damage on the norm.

Putting It All Together

Now, see which cards that fit your strategy make the cut. You've only got thirty slots to work with. Trim your choices down, paying attention to Mana Curve, making sure you have a workable distribution of cost and effectiveness and an acceptable proportion of offense and defense. Then start experimenting in matches, getting an idea for what parts of your idea actually work and what needs to be traded out.